There again. when you had a voice as great as Barry’s, why not use the phone? He’d call up to ask how I was doing. Every call would end with “By the way, have you heard?” then he’d come out with the latest joke he’d picked up in the pub. He wrote for many great comedians but he had more than just a writing relationship with Kenny Everett. They were good friends. Kenny used to call him “Ba”. Kenny, of course was gay, and once joked: “Oh, Ba, a wife and four children, what a smokescreen!”

People don’t tell jokes in the same way any more. Barry was holding the line on that world of laughter, and he was definitely old-school, but with his feet planted in the modern period. We all talked about wokeness and political correctness and whether you can have comedy without offending anyone ever. We were all concerned about that, but he was generous about young comics, too.

I loved the story he told about Vincent Price. He worked with him on the film Bloodbath at the House of Death, which he co-wrote with Kenny Everett. Price came and did a bit on that. Barry had had black hair when he was young, when he had first worked with Price. By this time he had gone white. He came into the room and Price said: “The child has gone white in the service of comedy.”

The truth is that comedy kept Barry young. He couldn’t not work; telling jokes was his lifeblood. He used to scan the birthday announcements in the newspapers, anyone that he knew was having a birthday he’d phone them up and give them a joke. When he broke his hip, the nursing staff thoughtfully put him in a private room. He asked to be moved back to the ward because that’s where his audience were. I will miss his laugh hugely. Won’t we all? He loved to laugh and he loved the sound of laughter.